The first area you will encounter when entering Foellinger Great Hall is the sublobby. There are two pieces of sculpture here. The one upstairs is "Untitled" and was done by a former faculty member of the University of Illinois- Professor Roger Kotoske. The sculpture on the lower level is a "Bust of Beethoven" by Antoine Bourdelle. These two pieces of artwork along with those in the sublobby of the Playhouse are really the only two pieces of permanent artwork in the Center. The reason for this is that the Krannerts wanted the art to be seen at the Center to be the performances put on on the stages.  Also, if you look up to the upper level, you will see a large bank of windows. The original design for the Center called for more banks of large windows but the Center was built in the 1960s and at the time there were riots on many college campuses. The Krannerts were afraid that if they left a lot of large windows in the design that rocks would get thrown through them.

      Upon entering Foellinger Great Hall, you will see a space worthy of hosting anything from small ensembles to the largest of orchestras. This is the largest theater at Krannert and can seat 2,078 people. This is down from the 2,094 that you may have heard people say in the past. Seats did not disappear but in the late 90s, a number of extra wheelchair accessible spaces were added. When this was done, seats needed to be removed so that the wheelchairs could get to these spaces. It is still possible to add these seats back in. These are the seats that sit along the hallway leading into the Great Hall on the sides of the theater. Originally, right after the wheelchair seats were added, these seats were added or removed on a nightly basis. Because of the labor required and the fact that the floor was slowly getting ruined, they were then taken out and left out for the most part.
    

      This hall is mostly reserved for vocal and instrumental performances and it is actually one of the most acoustically perfect concert halls in the entire world. There are certain factors that make this so. The room is almost perfectly symmetrical. Basically, if you were able to cut the room in half right down the middle and hold a mirror up to it, it would look almost like the theater the way it is now. There are actually four specific items that are not symmetrical. First of all, there is a slot on the stage door on stage right for the stage manager to look through during the performances and there is not a similar slot on stage left. Secondly, there is a white box up in the balcony by Door 7 which is a light switch for the theater and there is not a light switch on the opposite side of the balcony. Thirdly, the black windows at the very top of the room in back are windows to the lighting booths. All of these windows are not the same in size or position. Lastly, at the top of the balcony, at the top of each of the two center aisles, there are doors. When you are facing the top of the room, the one on the left is a door that leads to a staircase to get to the lighting booths. The one on the right is not a door but simply a cutout in the wall to aide in the symmetry of the room. This cutout used to have a doorknob on it but people kept attempting to walk through it and it was deemed a safety hazard so the dorrknob had to be taken down.
     

     When looking above your head, you will not see simple acoustic clouds with black steel beams above; you will see a full acoustic ceiling. Although clouds are a popular way to keep the sound near the patrons in many halls and theaters, Ellnora Krannert did not like the look.  The architect did not really know how to design spaces for acoustics so he simply designed an open room with plenty of space. A separate acoustician- Dr. C. Cyril Harris- was hired to design the interior of the hall. He designed the acoustic ceiling using a computer which was a pretty advanced task in the early 1960s. This ceiling is made from plaster and is suspended from the true ceiling of the room by heavy duty springs. The true ceiling of the room lies from about 30 feet above the acoustic ceiling in the back of the hall to about 90 feet above it in the front of the hall. There is a projection screen that hangs above the acoustic ceiling above the stage. A set of lights can be pulled back and the screen can be lowered. This screen reaches from the acoustic ceiling to the stage level when it is down. When it hangs above the stage it is not at all rolled or folded, it hangs completely flat.
     

   The hall sounds the same full as it does empty. This is accomplished by the fact that the fabric and foam in the seats is designed to absorb just as much sound as a person would sitting in the seat. The type of foam is also varied throughout the room. The foam in the seats is less dense where sound is more live so some of the sound will be absorbed and it is more dense in areas where the sound is more dead so that the sound will reflect. When you look around the room, you will also notice that there are no parallel surfaces. All of the surfaces are angled so that sound will always reflect to the audience. It will never get trapped in specific places.
Because of the fact that the Krannerts were from Indiana, there are some various materials used throughout Krannert that are native to Indiana. One of the most visible examples of these materials are the walls in the Great Hall. These walls are made out of Indiana Butternut wood. The Krannerts sent a carpenter to a farm in Southern Indiana that belonged to a friend of theirs. The carpenter went through 6,000 acres of Indiana Butternut wood and picked out 90 trees that he liked. The logs were sent to New York and milled. The panels were then sent back to Urbana and hung in the Great Hall. The panels were chosen so that the wood grain in panels near each other matches.
   

    There is a choral balcony in the Great Hall behind the stage. Depending on the current setup, this may consist of 2 rows or it may consist of 5 rows of seats. There is actually a temporary wall behind the second row of seats that can be pulled up above the acoustic ceiling to access the extra 3 rows. This wall was originally moved up and down by hand, but is now moved by a mechanical system. This balcony is mainly used for three things. First of all, it is used for shows that require both an orchestra and a chorus. The orchestra will be placed on stage and the chorus in the choral balcony. Secondly, these seats are sold to conducting students who want to see the front of the conductor rather than the back of his head. Thirdly, these seats are sometimes sold for overflow seating for very popular performances. There is another temporary wall behind the choral balcony. This wall can be pulled up into the ceiling to access an organ loft; however, Krannert does not now, nor has ever owned an organ, so this space is currently used for storage.
   

    The stage floor, house floor, and stage risers are made of White Oak. The stage floor is actually hollow. Some musicians claim that when performing in a large group, such as an orchestra, they can feels the tones resonating from the stage and therefore play better with each other. The lighting is also designed to be more ambient than focused on the stage. This way performers can easily read their music without being blinded by stage lighting. Lighting for special effects can be added to a limited extent in this hall but the other theaters provide many more options as far as lighting goes.
   

     Since this room is almost acoustically perfect, amplification is not generaly needed and actually strongly discouraged. It is needed in some shows (specifically for things like electronic instruments or playing instruments along to tracks). If an artist demands amplification, they are required to use a system specifically designed for this room. There are a cluster of speakers that always hang above the stage. These speakers are simply used for public address announcements before shows or during intermissions. Often times, you may also see microphones hung above the stage. This is because the audio department does do professional recordings in this hall. Actually, a very important thing to check before you go into the Great Hall is to make sure that the red recording lights are not on. There is one by door seven leading into the balcony and also one large RECORDING light by each of the tunnels leading to the Great Hall on level two. Artists will often contact the center and come in a few days ahead of their performance to do a recording. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra used to record here until they built their own facilities in the early 90s.

Foellinger Great Hall Stage

Upper balcony of Foellinger Great Hall

Acoustic ceiling in Foellinger Great Hall

Windows in Foellinger Great Hall sublobby

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